Rina Sasaki is a regular at a beauty salon in Osaka to have unsightly hair removed from her arms, legs and under her nose.

On a visit in mid-July, Rina, as always, was accompanied by her mother because she is still a 6-year-old in first grade at school.

Rina started visiting the salon, Dione, when she was 5 years old after a boy the same age as her in kindergarten made fun of the fuzz on her arm.

Her case is not exceptional.

Rina’s mother Asuka, 33, said her daughter fell into a malaise, worried that she would be teased about her body hair again. Rina begged her mother to let her join her when she went for beauty treatment.

The mother, who undergoes hair removal treatment for her arms, eventually found a salon suitable for her daughter.

“It’s not cheap, but I’m glad we went because she seems happy now,” Asuka said.

Young children are increasingly making up the client base for hair removal services at beauty salons and medical institutions.

PSYCHOLOGICAL THERAPY

Although figures are hard to come by, pediatricians say they are getting more requests from youngsters for hair removal treatment. Many doctors view treatment as a form of mental health therapy.

An online search turned up loads of salons and medical institutions offering hair removal treatment for kids. Some accept very young children.

Dione, which is operated by Osaka-based Trinity World Corp., accepts children as young as 3.

Maiko Sakamoto, the company president, established Dione 14 years ago with the aim of also providing treatment for children.

At the time, children of third-grade age or younger accounted for roughly 0.5 percent of clients at its directly operated outlets.

The figure has since increased tenfold to between 5 and 6 percent.

“It’s possible that children are becoming beauty conscious much earlier,” Sakamoto said, noting that many parents are open to hair removal treatment for their offspring, having experienced the procedure themselves.

Shonan Beauty Clinic offers a service for children to remove hair from their armpits, lower legs and forearms during or after the spring vacation before they move up to the fourth grade. After they graduate from elementary school, the children are eligible for more extensive treatment.

The number of children aged between 10 and 14 who received treatment increased 2.6 times from 2020 to about 2,600 in 2023.

A survey by Okayama-based Benesse Corp., whose main business is correspondence education and publishing, found that 77.3 percent of parents and guardians of elementary, junior and senior high school children said their offspring worried about unwanted or unsightly body hair. The survey carried out between April and May this year obtained valid responses from 1,284 of the adults.

The survey found that 57 percent of first graders worried about body hair.

Hair removal is not covered by insurance. And issues like safety and the outcome of treatment can vary from place to place.

Of course, many parents and guardians think 5 years old is way too young for children to be so concerned about their looks.

A 42-year-old mother in Saitama Prefecture north of Tokyo said her third-grader son started fretting around a year ago about the first stirrings of a “mustache” above his upper lip.

For her, it is only “peach fuzz.” Even so, her son always wore a mask, saying he was embarrassed.

After much consideration, she started using her shaver once a week to remove the “offensive” hair.

“I want to respect his choice about how he manages the way he looks because we are a family that can talk openly about hair issues,” she said.

A 43-year-old Tokyo woman said her fourth-grade daughter started worrying about her hair on her legs after a friend mentioned it.

“I tell her she also has cute-looking thick eyelashes, so she doesn’t lower her self-esteem just because she has thick hair,” the mother said.

PEDIATRIC CLINICS

Some pediatric clinics provide hair removal services.

In May this year, the Hikari Kids and Family Clinic in Kawasaki started offering laser hair removal for children who are in fourth grade at elementary school through third-year high school students.

The clinic has treated 11 children since then, it said.

Its operator, Ikushinkai Medical Group, takes the well-being of the youngsters into consideration and places importance on their mental health.

The clinic started offering general hair removal procedures that didn’t involve laser treatment several years ago because the issue kept cropping up among elementary, junior and senior high school students worried about their looks.

When dealing with the children, the individual circumstance of each client is taken into account.

One patient in the precocious puberty stage, which refers to pubertal development at an unusually early age, was desperate to have no body hair.

“We think hair removal is one way to solve their mental health issues if the children feel inferior, insecure or are having trouble relating to people because they are hairy,” said Toshikatsu Mitsui, the head of the medical group. “It is merely a form of psychological care, not a beauty care service.”

The clinic began throwing its energies into supporting teenagers worried about unsightly body hair and pubertal concerns after the COVID-19 pandemic hit Japan and provided consultations on truancy, obesity and sweaty palms and armpits.

‘LATER START BETTER’

There have been no reports of serious health problems or side effects associated with hair removal treatments for children, according to Takeshi Ouchi, a full-time lecturer at Keio University’s Department of Dermatology.

“It’s preferable to start receiving hair removal treatments when children reach puberty at around age 16, but the procedure can be an option for younger kids if they are anxious about what others think of them or have other concerns,” he said.